Trauma-informed Practice Certificate for Prospective Teachers, Social Workers, and Nurses

Trauma-informed Practice Certificate for Prospective Teachers, Social Workers, and Nurses

Grant:
Gilbert Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching
Academic Year:
2017 - 2018 (June 1, 2017 through May 31, 2018)
Funding Requested:
$6,000.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
sharisau
jseng
tih
shermanb
Overview of the Project:
Schools are an important context for building resilience in children who have experienced trauma. To do so, school professionals must understand the impacts of adversity and how trauma manifests in the body. They must also learn to interact with students in ways that are sensitive to the social and behavioral challenges that some will inevitably encounter. Pre-service training in trauma-informed practices is notably lacking, which is concerning because undergraduate and graduate students who aspire to careers in education or other helping professions have little or no exposure to this critically important content. Faculty from the School of Education (SOE), School of Nursing (SN), and School of Social Work (SSW) will collaborate on a certificate program for UM students called Trauma-informed Practice & Leadership (TiPL). TiPL is unique in its emphasis on interprofessional education for practice across the three disciplines. Enrollment of practicing school professionals in the certificate program, along with UM students, will enrich the learning environment and bring examples from the field into the classroom. Completion of a sequence of 3 one-credit courses will result in a certificate of completion. TiPL will have a significant impact on the teaching and learning environment at the UM by providing a space for faculty and students in SOE, SN, and SSW to share knowledge and pursue common interests. Because this certificate will also include practicing professionals, there will be a unique opportunity to strengthen ties to schools and to the local community.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

N/A

Project Achievements:

One of the benefits of an interprofessional team is that we had an opportunity to work with colleagues from different professions who engage with different pedagogical practices. Seeing different approaches to teaching as well as strategies broaden our repertoires. As a result of this work, the certificate features prominently in the School of Social Work's goals to strengthen teaching on trauma and trauma-informed practices. Each course is now included as standard offerings within the Welfare of Children and Families pathway/concentration of their MSW program. In the School of Nursing, one of our team members has created a new course titled, Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Trauma and is seeking to create a trauma certificate through Rackham. In the School of Education (SOE), a faculty member is tentatively planning to teach a graduate course on systemically trauma-informed practice to meet interest in the area of trauma in the SOE. Also, through the Trauma Collaboratory, led by one of the members of our team, there is a plan to develop a simulation experience (proof of concept) that can be used in the trauma-informed practice course in order to give participants an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge about trauma-informed practice and practice their interprofessional skills with an avatar family.

Continuation:
Yes. We began the second year with Trauma Basics in Winter 2020. It is being offered Spring/Summer 2020 and Fall 2020. Trauma-Informed Practice will be offered Fall 2020 and Creating and Sustaining Trauma-Informed Systems will be offered in Winter of 2021. Due to COVID we are moving from in-person workshops to online workshops. Due to the ongoing anti-black racism, we will be focusing on racial trauma and anti-racist trauma-informed practice in the trauma-informed practice course.
Dissemination:
All project team members shared project activities through conversations with members of their faculty and leadership, as the conversations helped us capture the complexity and nuance of this work. One of the project team members also shared aspects of the project and what we were learning with several members of the Center of Interprofessional Education. We will make the report available to the leadership of our schools and all interested colleagues.
Advice to your Colleagues:
The main factors that facilitated our success were our diverse perspectives and teamwork. We were all committed to the project and met regularly to discuss all aspects of the pilot. We worked hard to reach consensus on how we would handle challenges, which also contributed to the success of the program. What challenges did you experience and how did you overcome them?). Scheduling was the biggest challenge across schools. The scheduling and registration processes amounted to significant workload for the registrar teams in the three schools, as we were trying to balance enrollment to meet interprofessional education ideals (a relatively even number of students across programs). This effort to balance the numbers was a contributor to logistic work. Each school had different schedules that made a single offering of Trauma Basics (a prerequisite to the other courses) insufficient to meet the needs of students in all three programs. Because of this we added two additional offerings of the Trauma Basics course to allow students from all three schools the opportunity to earn the mini-certificate. Class size was also a challenge. We limited each school to a maximum of 25 students in the Trauma Basics course so we would occasionally have more students who wanted to take the course than space available. We were not able to open up space for people who were interested in the mini-certificate but not enrolled in one of the three schools or the SOE's Educator Preparation Program. We also encountered challenges with aligning content across courses; teaching content to students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels; and meeting the needs of students with basic and more advanced knowledge of trauma and trauma practices. To address these challenges, the instructional team met regularly to review course content, discuss student feedback, and refine materials based on our own review of how the courses were progressing. We also attended courses led by other members of the instructional team so that each instructor was familiar with the content and methods of teaching. Interprofessional practice is hard and rewarding. Although there were many challenges, we had a wonderful interprofessional experience because of our commitment to our goals and willingness to talk through any challenges until we came to a solution that all could agree on.
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